


A Half Life, A Subsistence

by alliedwolves



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Memory Erasure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-30 22:41:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19037059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alliedwolves/pseuds/alliedwolves
Summary: Neither can live while the other survives:An unlikely AU where Voldemort is stopped and lives as a curator of magical items. Harry can't live his own life tied up in another person's story. A story about freedom, eventually.





	A Half Life, A Subsistence

Marvellous Riddle

Harry had seen Tom Marvolo Riddle years ago, deep in the chamber of secrets. He'd been an attractive young man, brown hair falling in soft curls, a snub nose, and a sneer on a face not yet used to it. If anything remained of that bright young boy, it was the expression on Marvolo’s face when he talked about preservation. 

“There is nothing worse than letting a great legacy die.” He’d explained to Harry once, his face alight with zeal. “These artefacts are the last way we can remember the truly great. Wizards whose like we will never see again.” Marvolo’s long, spindly hands, pale as the china they caressed, delicately probed for weaknesses. The urn was perfect. He pronounced it so, and catalogued it where he felt it belonged. 

Marvolo’s living space was not cluttered, exactly, but it was as cluttered as it dared. Each and every piece had a place. There was a scale somewhere, permanently Stuck to each and every shelf, so anyone who touched anything could be blamed for so much as shifting it an inch to the right. The charts were not for Marvolo. He knew exactly where everything ought to be, ranked against the import of the wizard that made it, and the strength and majesty of the item itself.    
  


Harry Potter slurped coffee from his mug, setting it down carefully away from the artefacts. “A half life, a cursed life!” The label read, and when the mug grew hot it made whatever was inside it glisten like unicorn blood. His son’s friend Scorpio had an odd sense of humour. Rubeus Weasley-Potter had said Scorpio wanted to be an auror this year, and frankly the mug didn’t seem too out of place among those that shrieked “CONSTANT VIGILANCE” when used by those who didn’t own them, or those bubbles based on the Boy who Lived's prophesy that burst, and announced like a Howler:  

 

**Neither can live while the other survives.**

 

Dumbledore had wanted him to die, Harry knew. But it hadn't happened, it couldn't seem to happen, not so long as Voldemort existed. And so, Tom scuttled along amongst the paraphernalia of the past, and Harry loitered like a ghost, unable to move on just yet.

* * *

 

One day, the legend sparked out of existence, replaced by a long and dreary waiting, and on that day Marvolo collapsed face down amongst glassware dating back to the first Wizemagot, smashing it to pieces.

Harry felt lighter than he had in decades, or maybe ever, the last part of him tied to an endless destiny dead at last. 

 

Harry put in an application for the job of defences against the dark arts a month later. He was the first to last a decade in decades. 


End file.
